Ableton Live is a pretty flexible program. This is especially true when it comes to routing your signals and recording from an interface, re-recording from inside your interface, or what have you. In this article I will cover the bare essentials on routing signal in and out of your using some (hopefully) common scenarios…or at least feasable scenarios.

1. I want to record a signal from my USB/Firewire interface

Pretty common problem that I’d cover here if I hadn’t already written about it here.

2. I have a MIDI track but want to make it a plain audio signal inside Live

So, to first do this, you’ll need your MIDI track and an audio track (Cmd+T)  to record to. Then, look at the Audio To section of your MIDI. Open it up, and you should see whatever the name of your audio track is as an option. For example, here’s what my Audio To looks like:

So select the name of your audio channel (in this case 1-Audio) and you’re finished with that part. By now you should recognize this as a simple send/return scenario. So, now that we’ve sent the audio out of the MIDI track, we have to set the audio track to recieve it. So go to your audio track and, under the Audio From menu, you should see the name of your MIDI track (in my session, MIDI). Select it:

So now you’ve got your audio going out of your MIDI channel and into your audio channel. So hit the record button on your audio channel and the round button on whatever scene you want to record it to. Then, record the appropriate number of bars, and you’re done!

3. I want my signal to be 100% soaked in reverb/delay. I don’t want ANY dry signal!

Kind of a weird scenario, but I think it could be a lot weirder. This is very, very simple.

First, I’m going to assume that you have some type of time-based processor on your A or B returns. After that, just go to the track you want drenched, and go down to Audio (or MIDI) To. From there, you should see an option for Sends Only. Choose that.

Now you’ll need to make sure your Sends are visible. Also make sure the level on your returns is up and that they’re not muted. Then, turn up either the A or B send and you should start to hear your signal, albeit completely wet.

4. I want to bring my audio in from another application (Melodyne, Reason)

This is ReWiring. So if you’re familiar with ReWiring inside DAWs like Pro Tools or Logic, this’ll be a no brainer.

This varies a little bit from program to program, so you may need to spend some time with said programs to get this working. But in Live, all you need to do is choose the program from beneath the Audio From menu and then choose which input you want.

Keep in mind in Reason, you can assign different FX/synths to different outputs, so you could essentially have many tracks of just Reason. Whereas in Melodyne Essential, you have the option of either one stereo signal or two mono.

So that’s it for now. Those are, like I said, some very basic routing options inside Live 7. If you have any questions or want to know how to solve a specific routing problem, be sure to contact us!

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